Title: Declare Realms Good/Evil
Summary: Allow religions to declare realms good or evil, with some limited in-game effects tied to priests and followers.
Details:
Religions would have a menu where they could label religions as "Faithful" "Ignore" or "Evil." Only realms with at least one elder of the religion can be declared faithful.
This feature has two different, unrelated sections, described separately below:
Priestly Effects:
In "Faithful" realms, priests' preaching would be more effective– and especially priest' ability to laud that realm would be stronger, while ability to badmouth that realm would be weaker. The opposite would be true for Evil realms. Essentially, declaring a realm Faithful or Evil under this system does NOTHING... except what priests can make happen. But when priests work in coordination with local religious authorities, the continental religious system, etc, they are more effective. Thus a religion can't just blasé name a realm evil and expect to be able to hurt it: but a religion can name a realm evil and then, if that realm has lots of followers, its priests become deadlier weapons. This would incentivize realms to try and spread their religion to other realms, to try and get elders in a religion... but would also incentivize realms to be faithful. Realms want good courtiers– priests with a "Faithful Realm" bonus would also be useful. So even realms without warlike aims have an incentive to try and get religious support, and to try and avoid losing it.
Direct Effects:
These effects could be left out, or, as I prefer, in addition to the above effects. When a religion declares a realm evil, its conversion rates in that realm should fall– but its followers in that realm will be less loyal to that realm. In other words, a religion has a balancing act: by naming a realm evil, they can hurt it... but they will also lose their own followers. If a religion worked with several priests and, say, an invading realm of the same religion, this could be worthwhile because of stacking bonuses. But if a religion miscalculated its strength, it could be facing significantly declining numbers of followers in the target realm.
In Faithful realms, there would be an opposite effect. Conversion rates would rise in realms named faithful, and religious followers would be more loyal. Realms and religions benefit from a friendly relationship. Hence realms and religions have an incentive to try and capture each other's positions of influence.
Benefits:
Priest Effects:
Allows religions to conduct formalized diplomacy with game-mechanics effects, but without having some kind of automatic kill button. Religion can be used to support or weaken the actions of players, but can never substitute for them. Religions would gain power as they gain priests, especially vis-a-vis realms, as the more priests means the more people who can run around maintaining regions in faithful realms, or punishing unfaithful realms. This encourages player-level decision making and empowers the priest class without empowering the individual priest. A priest can't just up and do these things on their own: a religion does these things which affect the effectiveness of priests.
Direct Effects:
This would be similar to the peasant-effects of diplomacy now. Religion was a much bigger part of peasant lives than realm was in the Middle Ages. This fills a massive gap of "passive religio-political sentiment." Such a thing did exist, and should exist, in however small a form.
Possible Exploits:
Priestly Effects:
I am unable to think of any. It would not be exploiting the feature to make an extremely friendly state religion. But simultaneously, state religions would not enjoy the feature to its fullness. This system incentivizes converting your neighbors to your own religion, so that you can send your priests to hurt them if need be.
Direct Effects:
Again, it doesn't seem readily exploitable. It can't suddenly award someone a position. My only concern would be the fairness of stacked effects. If a realm has positive priestly effects, high conversion rates, and positive direct effects, and state-funded religion, it could simply make that realm fiendishly efficient. We might be okay with that, but it's something to consider.
Both:
After discussion, it was determined that declaring a realm "faithful" could actually be a useful offensive tactic to gain converts for other uses later on– declare an actually hostile realm faithful in order to gain converts, when they clearly aren't faithful. In order to limit this possibility, I have added a section in the details suggesting that a realm can only be declared faithful if they have an elder in the religion.
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Note: I have this as one feature request. Realistically, I see it as two feature requests in one proposal, because they are discussing the same topic, even if they're two different methods.
